Descartes’ Discourse on Method is a six part essay discussing sciences, religion and spiritualism.
The first part briefly began with the importance of applying knowledge appropriately, slowly and steadily. Descartes then remarked how his unsatisfying education left him lacking real-world experience, leading to how he self-learned critical thinking via inspection.
The second part opened with an observation of how result from collaboration across generation is worst than concentrated engineering effort, thus the need for a new scientific foundation that discarded all but four rules: No fact without evidence, divide big problem into smaller one, conduct problem in order from easy to hard, and study comprehensively.
The third part described the coping mechanism Descartes employed: Obey the surrounding, be mindful with action, control the mind, and experiment with everything to find the right occupation.
The fourth part began with the famous quote “I think therefore I am” which indicates the existence of the human soul and the separation of the human mind from nature. Descartes move on to reasoning for the existence of god via the perfectness in geometry, how argument against God using human’s ability to imagine does not suffice, and how the existence question can be applied to physical things as well.
The fifth part detailed how Descartes applied the method to study the heart and arteries, how the act of thinking and the complexity of human mind versus animals make the soul concept more viable, and a test for human: whether one respond like human, and if they were designed for one predefined task.
The last part ended the discourses with why he postponed the publishing of his works; how he hope by publishing it, scholar would be encouraged to contributing more practical and long-lasting knowledge; why he seek to pass this on himself; and how he hope to retire in peace.